


Fox at the Academy

by Doug48



Series: Zoo 1.2 [7]
Category: Zootopia (2016)
Genre: Drama, F/M, Gen, Police, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-01
Updated: 2019-05-26
Packaged: 2020-02-10 15:37:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18663313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Doug48/pseuds/Doug48
Summary: I wrote "Rabbit at the Academy" for one of my other alternate Zootopia series, so this is going to be a kind of mirror image story. However, "Rabbit" was very positive, reflecting what I feel like is Judy's somewhat positive world view, while this one is less positive, reflecting Nick's probable world view.





	1. My Life as a Classroom Mammal

Despite my fears and Grandfather's warnings, life at the Police Academy wasn’t too bad after I got used to the new schedule. Get up way too early and stay up way too late. Run everywhere and take a bunch of tests on various things I had already memorized for one reason or another. I figured I could do this easily during the required six months, even if sometimes I was bored out of my mind. 

“Class? Who would like to give me an overview of the criminal justice system?” The instructor asked. She was a grizzly bear and some sort of academic, with thick wire framed glasses and a license to practice some sort of law. She wanted to know if we, her students this morning, had prepared for her class by reading the course material. 

“In the criminal justice system, the people-“ One of my classmates began, only to be interrupted. 

“Don’t quote that TV show to me! It’s terribly over simplified,” the instructor replied, scowling. Then she smiled and looked at me. “Let's ask an expert. Foxtrot? What do you say?”

I thought about saying ‘ring ding ding ding,’ but I did not. “Ma’am, the people in Zootopia are represented by the police, the courts, and the prisons, in that order. Police arrest criminals, courts determine guilt or innocence, and then the prisons attempt to rehabilate the offenders. The prisons are controlled by private corporations including the Zootopian Correctional Corporation, the ZCC, and the courts bring in employees of private corporations to prosecute or defend various civil and criminal cases. Some members of the police force, or ZPD, are also employees of private corporations.” In fact, I knew that nearly all attorneys, detectives, and higher ranking cops are private contractors paid by one giant corporation or another, but few, if any, Zootopians are willing to admit any such thing. 

“Is that how they do it where you come from?” She asked.

“No ma’am. Wolfhollow uses a smaller, ‘Sheriff’ based system,” I replied, trying to make the actual arrangement sound simpler than it was. I very much wanted to avoid having to admit my place in that system, and, if we kept talking about it, I might have to discuss it. 

Thankfully, she didn't ask about my resume'. “Wolfhollow? It's not called Foxhollow anymore?” She asked instead. 

“That's right. The council,” meaning Grandfather, “debated the issue at great length, and then renamed it a few months ago. They had been informed, after the original maps were already made, that the name 'Foxhollow' had been taken.”

She paused, pacing in front of the class. “You’re on that council, aren’t you? Or you were? Quite the celebrity, you are,” she said, not letting me off the hook. I could feel the eyes of all my classmates on my back, and it was making my neck hairs stand up. 

“I was,” I replied. 

“So you helped set the immigration policy?" She asked, and then pretended to think. "I can't say I agree with it, based on what I've heard on the news.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I replied, trying to look like I was agreeing so she would let me off the hook. I knew there was no sense trying to explain such a complex issue to this academic, and she would probably just take whichever position she thought would be the most fun. Right and wrong seldom matter to people like this, and I had already heard several classmates muttering resentfully about the amount of attention I was getting. 

“Well? What do you have to say for yourself?”

“Our laws, and our ways, are what they are,” I replied, and several of my classmates groaned. They had clearly been hoping for a more entertaining response, or at least something to which the instructor could easily object.

“And your prisons?” She asked, but I'm sure she already knew the answer. 

“We rely heavily on work release, or we send prisoners to the ZCC,” I replied. Again, I'm over simplifying, but there is no way I'm going to try to explain the morality of what Grandfather will, and will not, accept as proof of rehabilitation, and if rehabilitation is unsuccessful? No sense keeping the dead weight around. 

“What do you have to say about the rumors of prisoners disappearing?”

“We also have stories about a monster in a lake. Lots of talk, but no proof,” I replied, playing her game.

The class eventually ended, and so I was able to get up and pass through the overly large doorway with the other students, trying not to get bumped too often and too hard this time. As a smaller mammal, I was often accidently shoved out of the way of some of the larger mammals, and I expected no different today. However, this time I was actually purposefully kicked, not pushed or bumped when some larger mammal may, or may not, have seen me. I might have dodged the irate bear, but there was very little room, and I didn't want to risk tripping another classmate, so I took the hit and then went to the doctor's office. 

“Watch it,” the bear said to me, grinning back over his shoulder at me as he walked away.


	2. Riot Control

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nick gets in trouble, and then goes back to class

“Sir. I wish to report an incident. I was purposely assaulted,” I told the polar bear commandant later that day. 

I didn’t bother telling him Boris did it and neither he, nor the doctor who taped up my ribs, asked. They may have known who it was based on the psychological profiles, or other cadets reporting it, but I know the event was not recorded on camera because the cameras don’t record what happens at ground level. Also, the academy, when all is said and done, is a school and schools have reputations for safety to maintain and students to attract. Sometimes they do that by ignoring reports like this one. 

“So, what do you want me to do about it? This sort of thing happens to small mammals who want to be cops. Or didn’t you expect it?" The bear replied, dismissively. "You’re not going to be able to complain when, and not if, when, this happens to you on the job. You need to be able to protect yourself, and you can't go crying to your instructor for a time out. Now stop whining and rejoin your classmates." 

Well, I tried. In fact, I had half expected this sort of “it’s not our problem” reaction from the instructors. However, I also thought my duty, as explained in the cadet’s handbook, was to report when an assault like this occurred. I knew they didn’t actually want me to report it or handle things on my own and I knew about the liability issues involved, even though the handbook doesn't mention those. Zootopia has nearly as many personal injury lawyers as it has con-mammals, after all, and I doubt that's a coincidence. 

At least he gave me permission to take care of the problem myself, even if he didn’t realize it. 

I waited a day, and then put Boris in the infirmary with a broken ankle on my way to class the day after that. I had given him time to decide I wasn’t going to retaliate, and time for me to think of the best sort of injury to give him, and when to do it. He had been lounging against a railing and didn’t even see me until he was already down. 

There were witnesses, of course, but I do have a few Wolfhollow friends at the Academy. They will not help me openly, but they will not see some things. 

I ended up in the Commandant’s office again anyway. Apparently, Boris had gone crying to the instructors, or his doctor had filed a report with the commandant, who had then remembered my injury and when it happened. 

“What do you have to say for yourself?” The commandant asked. 

I waited as the large white furred bear glared at me. Eventually I realized that I was supposed to respond. “I don't know what you're talking about.” I thought about making a joke about clumsy grizzly bears, but I thought that probably wouldn’t be well received by this polar bear. Based on the facial expressions, a joke wouldn’t have mattered. 

There was a moment of silence as three bears, the Commandant, an attorney, and the Academy doctor, all stared at me. They could not believe what I’d said. Why was I not just taking my punishment like a good fox? As for me, I was wondering if Judy had to put up with this sort of thing? Probably. She’s small and female, so she would have caught hell from both the giants and the bigots. Also, I’ve seen the way some of the males treat the females, especially the smaller wolves. I’m the smallest canine, but not by much. 

Finally, the commandant found his voice again. “You’re failed, mister. You’re gone! Pack your bags.” The polar bear shouted and hit his desk with a paw. 

“May I be excused? We’ve got an exercise,” I replied. It was true. We were being trained on crowd control and I had some ideas about ways a small fox like me could help. 

“Get out,” the commandant said, as the other two tried to look less worried about how I might react. ”Don’t bother with the exercise. You’re no longer a cadet here.” 

I didn’t bother to tell him he was wrong. I was still a cadet until the paperwork was filled out and approved, by him, in writing. Verbal threats are not legally binding in situations like this, so I returned to my room, put on my riot gear, and joined my classmates. 

“Oh, this'll be fun,” I told myself twenty minutes later, out on the edge of the drill field near the structures we often use for clearing exercises. 

It was also very informative. I knew Zoo police don’t use lethal weapons against protesters, and they don’t target mob leaders, which seemed even sillier to me. I mean, why not target the brains?

Nearly everyone has a kind of general idea about the sort of tactics the ZPD uses for crowd control because we had seen, and reacted to, the riots that day on the news. This was before the far more numerous prey mammals figured out that the predator minority were not actually biologically predisposed to go savage. Many of my predator friends moved their families to Wolf Hollow during that time, and some have not yet moved back to Zootop. 

The current class, minus Boris, were all in riot gear. There were about twenty of us in line, more or less shoulder to shoulder, and about three or four times that many rioters consisting of instructors and volunteers. There were always lots of off-duty cops volunteering every cycle for this. Older cops had done it to them, and now they were passing on the lessons. 

They started with pebbles and nearly empty plastic drink bottles. We knew this was meant to represent the real cobblestones and glass bottles of a real mob, so we acted like it was the real thing and put our heads down and over reacted.

They were being a little easy on us. Concussions are no joke as I can attest from personal experience. 

They charged, so we locked shields and hunkered down. I assumed a position, with my smaller shield, in one of the gaps between the legs of two larger classmates, expecting to get kicked like a soda can when the rioting rhinos, hippos, and elephants hit our defending rhinos, hippos, and elephants, but that is not what happened, or not exactly. 

I did get kicked, but not hard, and I also managed to block a squirrel from breaking through our line. We were both equally surprised to see each other, and he squeaked after bouncing off my shield. His friends had to shift slightly to avoid stepping on him. 

We cadets repelled the first rush, but not the next one. The second time, the rioters were slower, more deliberate, and they did not stop. Several of them went around our right flank, and that was something they hadn't done the first time.

Our line broke, so I jumped up and clung to the bricks of a nearest building, as my classmates either scattered behind me or lay on the ground under their shields. I really didn’t want to get flattened. A few of the rioters saw me, but they made no move to swat me off my perch. They knew the lesson had been delivered, and they were going easy on us. 

Finally, the exercise ended, and we did the after-action review. What went wrong? What might you have done differently? 

“Not come into work today,” one of the cadets said, to general amusement. 

“Very funny,” our instructor, Sergeant Stone, replied. “We’re cops, or anyway, I am, and you should be thinking of yourselves that way. We do what we’re told and we DO NOT shirk our duty. Even if that means we get beat up."

He paused to let that sink in, and then said, "hit the showers." 

I expected some trouble after the situation with Boris, but nobody said anything about it. Possibly because the other cadets and the cadre knew I had made myself useful in the exercise even after having been expelled by the Commandant? Nobody much liked Boris anyway, so my classmates didn’t even try to give me a blanket party. 

I never did get expelled. Apparently, paperwork was submitted and the mayor’s office sent it back "opened by mistake". Was this because of the Wolf Hollow attorney playing the recording I had made in the Commandant’s office? Possibly. In any case, the Commandant retired just before I graduated. I heard he didn’t want to be forced to see me get my shield, but that might not be the case. Maybe it was because his battery powered car caught fire one fine afternoon when he was close enough to see it, but not be injured? All I can say is what I heard, which is that electric powered cars don't have gas tanks and so they're very hard to make explode.


	3. Talking

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Talking to Judy about it

I saw Judy a few hours after the riot exercise, after I showered. They gave us some extra time off that afternoon because of the nature of the lesson. Also, many of the ‘rioters’ hung around so we could talk to them, and I had a very interesting discussion with a squirrel before Judy showed up. 

“What happened to you?” She asked when she saw me. I had apparently acquired another bruise in addition to what I got from Boris. “Oh, wait, riot control training? It’s about that time in your training cycle and I saw some additional large mammals around.”

“Yeah. Riot control. I’m pretty sure I got this bruise from a smaller mammal, not a larger one," I told her, gesturing to my face. "Squirrel. Found out later his name was Dave, if you can believe it. Offered him a job in Wolf Hollow with some other squirrels we have, and he said he would think about it.”

“Not a rhino?”

“No, the shields are not tall enough, you know?” She nodded, and waited for me to continue. 

“The instructors had put some thought into the exercise. They brought in some small mammals with markers this time. If your pants leg got marked, that means you’ve been cut. My job was to stop the small ones from getting between the shields of the large mammals. There were three small mammals and one of me. I stopped two of them. One of them, Dave, punched me in the eye, so I pushed him into the path of an elephant-”

“Nick! You can’t-“

“Calm down. I warned the elephant first and made sure he knew what I was going to do! This is a training exercise after all, and I had eye contact with the big one, so the little one, Dave, was never in any real danger. That broke up the charge briefly, but they still overran us the next time, however. It was, as one of my instructors in the Army used to say, 'good training'," I told her.

She had the kind of look on her face that made me think she thought I was crazy, so I changed the subject.

“So, Carrots, what did you do during your riot training?”

“I made myself useful. The instructors really didn’t know what to do with me, so I improvised,” she said, grinning at the nickname, and I remembered some discussions we had had about her time here. She was the first rabbit, and the first mammal smaller than a wolf. She had to wear a child's gymnastics uniform for the first week or so. 

“I know we've talked about this before, but how did you deal with your classmates?” I asked.

“You having some trouble?” She replied to my question with a question. She cocked an ear, and got that look she gets when she thinks someone, somewhere, has an expired parking meter. I've never seen her doing anything except parking meters, come to think of it. Not that I'm surprised. 

“A little.”

She thought about it, then replied. “My classmates mostly ignored me, so I didn't have to participate in the various dominance games some mammals seem to enjoy. Most of them didn’t take me very seriously because I’m so small.”

“I expect they soon learned better?" She nodded, and I continued, "some are ignoring me more aggressively than others." 

"Well, don't let the giants think they can run over you and get away with it. If so, they'll just keep doing it," she replied, off handedly. 

Her reply surprised me, but I didn't want to make a big deal of it. I had expected some sort of 'they're just picking on you because they like you' kind of silliness.


End file.
